1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a ring tones output method and a communication terminal apparatus suitable for application to, for example, a radio telephone apparatus called portable telephone terminal. In particular, the present invention relates to a ring tones output method of a communication terminal that has a music reproduction function of reproducing predetermined audio data and that reproduces the audio data as a ring tones in the telephone function.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there have been conducts various attempts to combine a communication terminal apparatus used as a radio telephone apparatus with a different function to form a composite terminal. In other words, radio telephone apparatuses are formed so as to be small-sized for example use and always carried by the user. Besides the function as a radio telephone, therefore, some radio telephone apparatuses have a watch function, a schedule managing function, and the like, and conducts display on a display device included therein.
As a further sophisticated composite terminal, it is proposed to incorporate an audio reproduction device in a portable terminal apparatus. With a capacity increase of semiconductor memories and improvement of the audio data compression technique in recent years, it has become possible to store audio data of, for example, approximately several tens minutes to several hours in a memory incorporated in a memory card. There has already been put into practical such a portable terminal apparatus that a headphone is attached to a small-sized reproduction device using this memory card as a recording medium (storage medium) and an audio signal can be heard on the headphone.
Such an audio reproduction device using such a memory as a recording medium is incorporated in a portable telephone terminal. When the portable telephone terminal is not used for talking, therefore, the audio signal can be heard by attaching a headphone to the terminal. Application of portable telephone terminals is thus widened.
Furthermore, by attaching an audio reproduction device to a portable telephone terminal, thereby downloading audio data from a center to the terminal via, for example, a radio telephone line, and storing the audio data in a memory card attached to the terminal, the audio data can be simply downloaded to the user. It is very convenient.
By the way, the above described portable telephone terminal is adapted to sound a ring tones at the time of call incoming as a telephone. As this ring tones, a melody of a short time of approximately several seconds to 10 seconds can be sounded as an electronic tone, besides an electronic tone that simply peeps. As the cases where such a melody is sounded, there are the case where a desired melody is selected from among melodies previously stored in an internal memory at the time of fabrication of the terminal, the case where the user inputs a desired melody by means of key operation, the case where the user accesses a server having melodies for ring tones prepared therein, via a telephone line, downloads data of the desired melody from the server, and stores the data in the terminal.
By sounding an electronic tone of such a melody, terminals used by individuals can be distinguished. For example, it becomes easy to know whose terminal a call has arrived at. Herein, a call tone sounded by a terminal at the time of call incoming is referred to as ring tones.
In the case where a melody previously prepared in an internal memory of a terminal is sounded, however, there is a problem that melody kinds are restricted to those previously prepared. Also in the case where data of a desired melody is downloaded from the server, there is a problem that only melodies prepared on the server side can be set. In the case where a melody is inputted by key operation, there is a problem that complicated key operation conforming to musical intervals of the melody becomes necessary.
Furthermore, as for the conventional ring tones of a melody, an electronic tone of a predetermined musical interval is generated in the terminal on the basis of data of the melody and the melody is outputted. In some terminals, a complex tone such as a double tone can be generated. Basically, however, the electronic tone is an electric composite tone, resulting in a problem that a change in tone quality is poor.